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The Environmental Protection Agency is tightening regulation of ethylene oxide, a carcinogenic gas used to sterilize medical devices. The agency is trying to balance the interests of the health care industry supply chain with those of communities where the gas creates airborne health risks.
South Dakota allows doctors to terminate a pregnancy only if a patient’s life is in jeopardy. Lawmakers say a government-created video would clarify what that exception actually means.
A lack of oversight and standards for pregnancy care in jails is becoming more problematic as the number of incarcerated women rises and abortion restrictions put medical care further out of reach.
While many Republican state lawmakers remain firmly against Medicaid expansion, some key leaders in holdout states are showing a willingness to reconsider. Public opinion, financial incentives, and widening health care needs make resistance harder.
Doctors, patients, and hospitals have railed for years about the prior authorization processes that health insurers use to decide whether they’ll pay for patients’ drugs or medical procedures. The Biden administration announced a crackdown in January, but some state lawmakers are looking to go further.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion and many states banned the procedure, reproductive health care organizations hired dozens of people to help patients arrange travel and pay for care.
The designers of the Affordable Care Act might have assumed that they spelled out with sufficient clarity that millions of Americans would no longer have to pay for certain types of preventive care. But they didn’t reckon with America’s ever-creative medical billing juggernaut.
California’s governor vetoed a bill extending insurance coverage for kids with hearing loss, but most states now require it.
Alex Azar advanced Canadian drug importation as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services. Now he chairs the board of a company managing Florida’s importation program.
Even in states where laws protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care, malpractice insurance premiums are keeping small and independent clinics from treating patients.
Adults who develop one autoimmune form of diabetes are often misdiagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Those wrong diagnoses make it harder to get the appropriate medications and technology to manage their blood sugar. Many Black patients wonder if their race plays a role.
Only a few states have rules to protect workers from the growing threat of extreme heat, either indoors or outdoors. California is expected to adopt heat standards for indoor workers in spring, even as federal legislation has stalled.
Delaying cancer treatment can be deadly — which makes the roadblock-riddled process that health insurers use to approve or deny care particularly daunting for oncology patients.
Cost estimates balloon and complications mount as the Defense Department grapples with PFAS pollution at hundreds of its bases and surrounding communities.
The HeartMate 3 is considered the safest mechanical heart pump of its kind, but a federal database contains more than 4,500 reports in which the medical device may have caused or contributed to a patient’s death.
As opioid settlement dollars land in government coffers, a swarm of businesses are positioning themselves to profit from the windfall. But will their potential gains come at the expense of the settlements’ intended purpose — to remediate the effects of the opioid epidemic?
Thousands of people shared their experiences and related to the financial drain on families portrayed in the “Dying Broke” series, a joint project by KFF Health News and The New York Times that examined the costs of long-term care.
Being Black has always been dangerous for pregnant women and infants in the South. And researchers say things are continuing to move in the wrong direction.
Peer-to-peer efforts can meet a clear need among students whose colleges may not make sexual health products accessible or affordable.
A rural South Dakota medic said using an ambulance video system to communicate with a doctor gave him peace of mind as he treated a patient who was seriously injured when gored by a bison.
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